A Book a Month for a Year – Goal Accomplished!

Have you ever made a New Year’s Resolution and actually accomplished it? What a great feeling! How about making a resolution and then blowing it out of the water? It doesn’t happen often, and it’s my first time doing it. But after setting out to read six books in 2014 (a lot for me), I ended up reading twelve!

Can I go off an a tangent for a minute? I see many bloggers who read a book a week or even hundreds of books each year. What?! I, by no means, purport that they’re lying. But I am a slow reader without sufficient time or interest to read that many books. So hats off to those ladies. I will NEVER be joining your camp if for no other reason than pure inability to plow through that many books. In the meantime, I’m going to celebrate reading twelve books in one year because that’s significant for me.

Back to achieving (or exceeding) my goal, the taste of success has been a game-changer in my perspective on goal-setting in general. Throughout the year, and especially at the beginning of the year, the world around us sets forth to accomplish a set of new goals and resolutions, many of which will fall by the wayside. Surely, a few will come to fruition and bring success to the committed goal-setter. Most, however, are long gone before we’ve made much progress.

Accomplishing this longer term goal really changed my perspective on setting goals. I’ve never been one to set tangible goals for myself. I meet deadlines, complete my work assignments, and probably meet and achieve far more “goals” than I consciously recognize. We all do, I suspect. But I haven’t historically set specific long-term goals.

During 2014, I read the following books and wrote about a few of them:

While it may not seem like much, accomplishing this goal inspired me to create my 2015 Manifesto. I also planned 12 Dates of Christmas for M and me. I felt the satisfaction in accomplishing a goal I set out for myself and appreciated that it gave me direction and encouragement to do something good for me.

Hopefully I’m not diving in too deep. But if all these plans, or even some of them really, come to fruition, it will make for a pretty exciting year full of lots of fun and meaningful activities.

Funny the impact reading a dozen books can have on my overall perspective about setting goals for the future.

While I love consuming media (books, magazines, blogs, podcasts, etc…), I hate having the physical products, where is applies, cluttering up our apartment after I finish reading them. Consequently, I get almost all my books from the library or on Audible. Above, I’ve linked each title to the audiobook (where available) so you can find it. Where I couldn’t find an audio book, I linked to the Amazon listing (since I can’t link to your local library…).

For those of you who are readers, or want to become readers, Audible offers your first book free when you sign up. You can try it out without any heartache that you won’t like or read (i.e. listen) to the book.

I’ve found listening to audio books and podcasts has turned my commute to and from work from drab into fab (that sounds so cheesy – haha). But really, I consider my commute not only an investment in myself but also a little dose of “me time” thanks to the audio player on my iPhone and a little set of headphones.

What are you reading these days? Do you use Audible or listen to audiobooks?

Keep me posted on what’s in your library right now. I think reading is a great investment in ourselves and so important to growing. I shared about Leaders as Readers a long while back, and my stance hasn’t changed. Hope you find something great to read!

Trackbacks

[…] maker) came about, in part, as a result of actually accomplishing a goal I set for 2014 to spend more time reading. That 2014 goal revived my connection with reading, and I’ve buried my nose in far more books […]

[…] on and have been reading a bit more recently. I hopped back on the book-reading band wagon after I set a goal in 2014 to read 12 books (one per month). I’m sure many of you are rolling your eyes because you blow through books […]

Hi! I'm Jen, editor of Honestly Modern. Welcome to this space all about Sustainable Living for Modern Families. Dive in for ideas to help families pursue more eco-conscious and intentional living in a modern world. Find out more about Why Modern Matters!

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